I'm a writer, mostly of speculative fiction, living in rural Tasmania. I've got a rural GP wife and three small kids, and I keep a running commentary of life here so that when my kids are old enough to give a shit, they can read up and discover who their parents used to be.
I tried doing this on paper, but I sucked at it. So I tried doing it online with an audience. It worked.
May contain adult language and concepts. Deal with it.

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Christmas For The USA Will Be A Lonely Event This Year.

I have an acquaintance in the packaging and posting industry, and apparently yesterday he had a very, very interesting day.

Turns out that the USA has now banned the sending of any personal effects by air, except where accompanied by a traveller. Basically, that means if you were planning to send any Christmas gifts to friends or relations in the USA -- it's tough shit for everybody.

No doubt this is supposed to prevent exploding printer cartridges or other such fiendish al Qaeda ingenuity. But what it's really going to do is turn Christmas, USA into a living hell for the US Customs department.

At this point, I can't find any confirmation of this particular ban. But I trust my source absolutely, and seeing that he's got a serious vested commercial interest in this issue, I believe he's taken the time to get his information right.

My advice to readers: hold off on sending any packages to the USA until you can find out for sure what's the deal here. And to anybody participating in a cross-border Secret Santa or other such exchange, you may wish to notify USAnian participants that your contribution might be (very) slow in arriving.

I'll stay in touch with my buddy in the industry on this, and pass on any information I can. Hopefully, the US will realise that it's made a colossal blunder, and the order will be reversed in the near future, or even better, not even implemented. But I wouldn't count on it.

Meanwhile... so if we can't even send gifts to celebrate the Nativity and all that good stuff, you wanna tell me again how we're winning this 'war on terror'? Because right now, it's starting to look like a 'War on Christmas', with the US government in full Grinch costume.

Edited to add: confirmation is in, courtesy of redditor shortkid422 - check the following two links.

Apparently it's only a 30-day ban at the moment. We'll see how it develops, eh ?

Yes, some poor American child won't receive that Didgeridoo he was waiting for. *tears* A lonely xmas indeed. Seriously, most of the grownups over here get by at the holidays by stuffing our faces and getting drunk. Xmas is for the kids and the latest Modern warfare isn't being shipped from France. Am I missing something?

Already told you: not interested in debate there. Nor did I equate one side with the other. The equivalence is entirely yours. Two bad guys don't have to be the same in any way: Adolf Hitler does not equal Tomas de Torquemada, but neither of them is on my Christmas list.

Has Obama put a definitive stop to waterboarding yet? Is he prosecuting the people who carried it out?